Children's Sleep and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The COVID-19 pandemic and protracted home confinement required adjustments to schedules and routines generating concern about children's sleep. This review describes general considerations regarding children's sleep, changes and disturbances in their sleep during the pandemic, and the association of sleep measures with health and psychological outcomes in general and in the context of the pandemic. RECENT FINDINGS: A number of studies found an increase in the duration of children's sleep with later bedtimes and waketimes for some children. The research also documented sleep disturbances and associations between children's sleep and psychological outcomes. The extent to which increased sleep duration and changed sleep behaviors translated into improved sleep quality and/or a change in sleep disturbances remains unclear. This review suggests the importance of considering children's sleep in other mass trauma situations including, for example, natural and man-made disasters, as well as pandemics.

Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior in Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for Mental Health.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This paper examines children's physical activity and sedentary behavior and associated psychological outcomes coincident with the COVID-19 pandemic. RECENT FINDINGS: Generally, the research has found decreased physical activity and increased sedentary behavior, both of which are associated with various psychological outcomes. The research on sedentary behavior has focused on screen time with minimal consideration of other sedentary behaviors or of specific physical activities or the context in which these behaviors occurred. Changes in children's daily routines and activities have received little attention in the mass trauma research despite the fact that disasters disrupt individual, family, and community life. Thus, the current report contributes to an understanding of the breadth of mass trauma effects, underscores the importance of physical activity and sedentary behavior and their associations with health and psychological outcomes, and is a reminder to consider children's daily lives both during times of crisis and under usual circumstances.

Inconclusive Findings in Studies of the Link Between Media Coverage of Mass Trauma and Depression in Children.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This paper reports a review of the empirical research examining the association between mass trauma media contact and depression in children, the factors that may influence the association, and the difficulties encountered in the study of media effects on depression. RECENT FINDINGS: All of the included studies assessed general population samples. Pre-COVID-19 research focused primarily on television coverage alone or on multiple media forms including television, while COVID-19 media studies examined various media forms including social media. Most studies used cross-sectional design and non-probability sampling. The review revealed inconclusive findings across studies. The study of mass trauma media effects on depression in children is complicated by a number of potential confounding factors and by the relatively high prevalence of depression in the general population. Media contact was a relatively minor consideration among other interests in the extant studies which failed to explore numerous issues that warrant attention in future research.

Involving children in disaster risk reduction: the importance of participation.

Background: Millions of children are affected by disasters every year. Children need not be passive victims, however, but instead may contribute to disaster risk reduction activities. Objective: This paper provides a theoretical foundation for children's involvement in disaster risk reduction activities. Method: The paper reviews and analyses the literature on children's participation, on their developmental capacity to participate, and on disaster risk reduction activities involving children. Results: Participation yields numerous potential benefits for children, including enhanced personal development and skills, self-efficacy, and interpersonal relationships, and for communities through improved social connections and networks and disaster preparedness. Conclusions: Children are resources to be cultivated and mobilized for disaster preparedness, response, recovery, and resilience. Attention is needed to identify approaches to appropriately enlist, engage, and involve children in disaster risk reduction activities; to promote these efforts; and to evaluate these approaches.

Planteamiento: Millones de niños se ven afectados por desastres cada año. Sin embargo, los niños no necesitan ser víctimas pasivas, sino que pueden contribuir a las actividades de reducción del riesgo de desastres. Objetivo: Este documento proporciona una base teórica para la participación de los niños en actividades de reducción del riesgo de desastres. Método: El documento revisa y analiza la literatura sobre la participación de los niños, acerca de su capacidad de desarrollo para participar y de las actividades de reducción del riesgo de desastres que involucran a los niños. Resultados: la participación ofrece numerosos beneficios potenciales tanto para los niños, que incluyen una mejoría de su desarrollo personal y habilidades, de su autoeficacia y de sus relaciones interpersonales, como para las comunidades a través de mejores conexiones y redes sociales, y una mejor preparación para los desastres. Conclusiones: Los niños son recursos que se pueden cultivar y movilizar para la preparación, la respuesta, la recuperación y la resiliencia ante desastres. Se necesita atención para identificar enfoques para reclutar, involucrar e implicar apropiadamente a los niños en actividades de reducción del riesgo de desastres; para promover estos esfuerzos; y para evaluar estos enfoques.

Effects of Displacement in Children Exposed to Disasters.

The literature on children's responses to disasters is well developed with increasing attention to the confounding experiences of displacement. This paper presents an overview of the emotional and behavioral effects of displacement on children and adolescents and describes their educational adjustment in terms of both academic achievement and school behavior. A summary of family effects elucidates how children's functioning is influenced through the family system in which they are embedded. The psychosocial impact of displacement reflects the myriad social losses that children and their families may face. Information from this review of the current literature on the effects of displacement may inform the design and delivery of support and intervention services for children and families following disasters.

Assessing community resilience: A CART survey application in an impoverished urban community.

This article describes an application of the Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit (CART) Assessment Survey which has been recognized as an important community tool to assist communities in their resilience-building efforts. Developed to assist communities in assessing their resilience to disasters and other adversities, the CART survey can be used to obtain baseline information about a community, to identify relative community strengths and challenges, and to re-examine a community after a disaster or post intervention. This article, which describes an application of the survey in a community of 5 poverty neighborhoods, illustrates the use of the instrument, explicates aspects of community resilience, and provides possible explanations for the results. The paper also demonstrates how a community agency that serves many of the functions of a broker organization can enhance community resilience. Survey results suggest various dimensions of community resilience (as represented by core CART community resilience items and CART domains) and potential predictors. Correlates included homeownership, engagement with local entities/activities, prior experience with a personal emergency or crisis while living in the neighborhood, and involvement with a community organization that focuses on building safe and caring communities through personal relationships. In addition to influencing residents' perceptions of their community, it is likely that the community organization, which served as a sponsor for this application, contributes directly to community resilience through programs and initiatives that enhance social capital and resource acquisition and mobilization.

Building community resilience to disasters through a community-based intervention: CART applications.

The Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit (CART)* is a community-driven, publicly available, theory-based, and evidence-informed community intervention designed to build community resilience to disasters and other adversities. Based on principles of participatory action research, CART applications contribute to community resilience by encouraging and supporting community participation and cooperation, communication, self-awareness, and critical reflection. The primary value of CART lies in its ability to stimulate analysis, collaboration, skill building, resource sharing, and purposeful action. In addition to generating community assessment data, CART can be used as a vehicle for delivering other interventions and creating sustainable capacity within communities. Two models for CART implementation are described.

The Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit (CART): development of a survey instrument to assess community resilience.

While building community resilience to disasters is becoming an important strategy in emergency management, this is a new field of research with few available instruments for assessing community resilience. This article describes the development of the Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit (CART) survey instrument. CART is a community intervention designed to enhance community resilience to disasters, in part, by engaging communities in measuring it. The survey instrument, originally based on community capacity and related literature and on key informant input, was refined through a series of four field tests. Community organizations worked with researchers in a participatory action process that provided access to samples and helped to guide the research. Exploratory factor analysis performed after each field test led to the identification of four interrelated constructs (also called domains) which represent the foundation for CART Connection and Caring, Resources, Transformative Potential, and Disaster Management. This model was confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis on two community samples. The CART survey can provide data for organizations and communities interested in assessing a community's resilience to disasters. Baseline data, preferably collected pre disaster can be compared to data collected post disaster and/or post intervention.

The Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit (CART): an intervention to build community resilience to disasters.

Community resilience has emerged as a construct to support and foster healthy individual, family, and community adaptation to mass casualty incidents. The Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit (CART) is a publicly available theory-based and evidence-informed community intervention designed to enhance community resilience by bringing stakeholders together to address community issues in a process that includes assessment, feedback, planning, and action. Tools include a field-tested community resilience survey and other assessment and analytical instruments. The CART process encourages public engagement in problem solving and the development and use of local assets to address community needs. CART recognizes 4 interrelated domains that contribute to community resilience: connection and caring, resources, transformative potential, and disaster management. The primary value of CART is its contribution to community participation, communication, self-awareness, cooperation, and critical reflection and its ability to stimulate analysis, collaboration, skill building, resource sharing, and purposeful action.